[Michael Szalapski]

Yeah, the video’s not showing up; it does not embed.

But off of the top of my head:

I’m not in front of my AE machine at the moment but there should be a threshold-type control in the glow effect’s settings that will allow it to affect more or less of the image depending on its brightness. The higher the number the more it’ll just be the highlights.

You say you’re playing with the Brightness&Contrast controls? They are the worst tool for color correction. For more control use levels or curves (or both). Read the well-written Adobe help documentation for more info on them.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

After Effects has more powerful color correction tools, but they may not be needed. It really depends on how much work needs to happen for your project.

What sort of things do you need to have done? An example pic or two wouldn’t hurt as we try to help.

If you do plan to use AE to do the color correction there have been several threads here on the best HD formats to use with it, a quick search should do the trick.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

If you refer to the flipping letters of a departures/arrivals board at a train station or airport you should do a quick little search on the COW. There have been numerous posts about this over the years including these two I just found.

https://forums.creativecow.net/archivethread/2/666323
https://forums.creativecow.net/archivethread/2/739180#759055

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

And, if you don’t care too much about quality, the new YouTube setup isn’t too bad. It can even do HD. There are, of course, problems with it
1. It may take an hour or two for it to process your file and make it HD available.
2. Private sharing is tricky
2a. You could also let it be public and assume that nobody’s going to stumble across it, but I have had some clients who would definitely not approve of that.
2b. You can make a video private between you and another user, but that requires them to be a YouTube member.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

Just a quick thought, why not use a color key to isolate your color on the layer? This tutorial might point you in the right direction on that. https://library.creativecow.net/articles/kahlenberg_roland/coolsville.php

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

I’m not a blazing expert on Particular and I’m not in front of my AE machine at the moment, but here’s a thought:
In case your particle application doesn’t have the ability to affect existing particles, what you could do is precompose your particle effect and time remap it in your main comp.

Also, if you don’t already have it, Wondertouch’s ParticleIllusion does have the ability to suddenly bring in a “force” that acts on existing particles. In fact, you can bring in a bunch of different forces at different velocities, sizes, and directions.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

Awesome! I’m so glad it worked out for you. Next time hire someone to punch the director in the face. 🙂

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

You’re welcome! That’s what we’re here for. Thank you for letting us know that it worked. We appreciate knowing we’re doing good!

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

Have you tried trashing the prefs?

To restore default preference settings, hold Ctrl+Alt+Shift (Windows) or Command+Option+Shift (Mac OS) while the application is starting.

It’s surprising the number of errors this can fix.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

I sincerely hope you have the chance to reshoot this. I suspect that once you get the footage starting to look the way you want, following Kevin’s suggestions, you’ll discover that you will need to relight it to get it to look the way you want.

Of course, it’s just a guess. We haven’t got a picture for reference of what you shot.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.